Don't worry. God has big shoulders. He just laughs at the absurdity of your blaming Him for stuff we humans do or nature does.

The bigger problem is not the stuff that happened or is happening, but your faithlessness.

Faithlessness is generated by misunderstanding the spiritual plane and the workings of the real world as compared to the drama of our ego plane.

The thing to remember is that God, Love, is always there for us beneath the drama but the drama blocks our awareness of Love's presence. We get caught up in, and sometimes overwhelmed by, the drama.

The bumper sticker reads, "Shit happens," and I always like the old saying that "There's always something."

Indeed there is. No reason to give up your faith. Give up, instead, your belief that God is a puppeteer and micromanages our nonsense. Stay focused, if you can, on our UU 6th prinicple which is the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. In is in this principle that we can put our faith in even though, at times, the achievement and existence of this seems impossible.

7 comments:

How many people have blamed God for the floods in Houston and Irma's devastation in the Caribbean and Florida and yet the climate scientists tell us that the severity of these storms is related to climate warming and climate warming is due to human activity of CO2 emissions. In other words, God has done this damage to us we have brought it on ourselves. Interestingly, Texas and Florida are red states that have voted for politicians who are climate deniers and support the fossil fuel industries. As Pogo said, "We have seen the enemy and it is us." We humans need to clean up our act and quit blaming God.

There are so many forces in our contemporary world that undermine our faith in God. We are constantly encouraged to put our faith in money and material things, in romantic love, in guns, in patriotic fervor of some sort. We live in an insane world with all sorts of perverted beliefs and motivations. UU is the purist faith I have encountered but I find few people who actually understand it. It's a shame that the ministers and preachers can't more clearly communicate UUs message to the world so as to attract more interest.

Tom you raise an interesting point. If a UU is asked, "What do UUs believe in?" "In what do UUs put their faith?" I think most UUs would not be able to provide a succinct and coherent answer. The UUs have created what appears to most as the modern day "Tower of Babel" Without more coherence, UUs will continue to lose members and not be able to attact, engage, and retain newcomers.

Rev. Guengerich in his book, God Revised, tells the story of losing the faith of his childhood and forming a faith of his own. He describes his faith in gratitude and the recognition and acknowledgment in our radical dependence on others and life. This is a good step forward and others have suggested that forgiveness comes before gratitude. If Forgiveness is to be a foundational activity which UUs can put their faith in, how does this work?

UUs have never much focused on forgiveness because of the Universalist's belief in the unconditional love of God so forgiveness is not needed in heaven; forgiveness is only needed here on earth to get to heaven. Forgiveness works by recognizing and acknowledging the harm and then repairing it which sometimes takes absolution and a rising above the earth bound drama. Absolution requires faith in the ultimate goodness of the universe.

There is no creed, not loyalty oath that people have to take to join a UU church. The historical statement that we don't have to think alike to love alike holds sway in the denomination. While this saying attributed to Francis David sounds great in a cliched soporific kind of way, but what does it actually mean on the ground, you know, where the rubber hits the road?